On finishing projects

This morning, while we continued to wait for our building permit, my wife and I reviewed the photo album which chronicles all that we've accomplished on our humble abode thus far. Everytime we came to the end of a section I heard this refrain echoing in my head "we still have to finish this or that little detail." It's true. We're great idea people. We're super, full of energy starters but we suck at actually bringing projects all the way to completion. Mind you, as a rule, the things left to do are fairly minor and visitors might not even notice them but the unfinished things are there. They taunt us and dare us to tackle them. Generally we are pretty good at just ignoring their tauntings and darings but once in a great while, we say, "Enough already! You're going down, little unfinished detail!"

Today I set myself to finishing our barn. Well, OK - not "finishing" per se but at least getting one of the biggest unfinished details out of the way. I had to get electricity out there. I've known how I was going to do this for a while but never found the energy for it (mainly because it involved digging a 25 foot long 18 inch deep trench. Last week, while I was tearing down the chimney and fighting off bats, I had my son and his friend dig the trench for me. Today I went to my friendly neighborhood hardware store, purchased 75 feet of direct bury cable, spliced it on to the existing cable and got all the way to the barn.

I had to fill in the trench afterwards so I dumped a bunch of the chimney bricks in it. I also threw some beer cans (empty), and some dog poop in there. To quote one of my favorite philosophers/theologians Mr. T, "I pity da fool" who has to do an archeological assessment on that area. Indiana Jones is in for a big surprise if he sinks his 4x4x24 hole in the wrong spot.

But I digress. We still don't have power to the barn but it's close. (I need some parts yet and, mercifully, my friendly neighborhood hardware store closes at noon on Saturdays). I might take Monday off and then I'm sure I can get it done. Then I might finish some of those other things (but probably not...) Seriously though, if we're going to do this whole addition thing, we've got to learn how to complete a task.

This is our barn. You can't tell from the picture that it doesn't have electricity but even I can see at least three things that need to be done yet. If you can find them, you might win a fabulous prize!